


A Field Guide

by Seven_tan



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: BAMF Stiles, Gore, M/M, Original Character(s), Spark Stiles Stilinski, friend breakups, scott is a dick sometimes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-08
Updated: 2016-09-17
Packaged: 2018-07-22 07:17:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7425283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seven_tan/pseuds/Seven_tan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles is good at ending conversations. Stiles is also apparently so fucking fantastic at ending friendships he doesn't even have to try. </p><p>Or, the one where Stiles goes Wendigo hunting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It had been a wet morning when Stiles left Beacon Hills behind him, a steady drizzle of rain decorating the windshield of the jeep like dust. She'd seen worse weather, got him safely to San Francisco in under an hour and a half with no issue (the clever sigils he'd etched into the meat of the back seat might have helped).

If it was raining then, it was pouring now.

Torrents of rain slammed into the top of the car, the highway near deserted. Thunder threatened in the distance, the crackle of lightning practically sparking against Stiles skin as he approached the city border. Pools of water sluiced against his wheels, spraying out onto the curb, the road all but flooded. Praise the lord for four wheel driving. No way in hell would he have even made it this far without some issue. Not that he could stop now, anyway. It's late evening. The low light and snap of thunder don't make for a good combo for a peaceful drive, but he can't stop, won't stop until he gets to Beacon Hills. 

Something had tripped the wards he'd left behind, which meant that something big, bad, and probably supernaturally ugly was threatening the town. Stiles knew that Beacon Hills would be rampant with destruction and chaos. Dragons were practically just your average Tuesday since the clusterfuck that was his high school career. He wasn’t exactly welcome back, but the wards he'd left to protect his family, his friends, he'd set them up with an extraordinarily high tolerance for bullshit. To trip them, it would probably take a big bad bent on jump-starting the apocalypse the hard way, or that someone was actually literally dead. Bad times all around, all things considered.

He wouldn't call his pace desperate just yet. He takes the jeep carefully around corners, sticking to main roads for a longer but safer drive. Stiles isn't about to start cutting corners when it comes to his own safety, he's really no good to anybody if he's (also?) dead. Wind rattles the frame of the jeep, coming at him like a thing possessed when he turns a corner and leaves the side of the car exposed to the uncovered hillside, torrents of rain slamming into the steep incline. 

Stiles turns the corner to the street with his house and tries to will away the sudden mental image of his dad collapsed or taken. He wasn't dumb, he called before he left, made sure that everything was okay on his end of things. He’d called when the wards had first been tripped, too. Call him what you want, just not underprepared.

Not that he'd given anybody else much notice that he was coming, but really, when ambient magical energy is this high for whatever reason, sometimes you just can't postpone the road trip. 

His umbrella opens itself with a quiet snick the second he steps out of the jeep, throwing her into park behind his dad's car. It hovers above him dutifully as he rounds around to the trunk, his suitcase hovering lightly above the sidewalk and steering quickly towards the house the second he has it anywhere near the ground. It's too dark for anyone except the creatures of the night to see anything out here anyway, even if some of the runes tattooed on his arms are glowing faintly, and he's pretty sure that the old lady across the way isn't one. Pretty sure.

His dad opens the door for the knocking luggage, and looks appropriately confused.

"Stiles?"

There's a grin on his face before he can even parse what he's saying. "Aren't you going to let it in? I practically feel like I'm taking a shower out here."

He snatches his backpack from the trunk, catches his dad shaking his head almost disbelievingly at his suitcase as he steps aside to let it in the house. The umbrella trails slightly behind him as he sprints up the steps, leaving him shaking out his wet hair in the foyer with a grin.

He can feel a hard edge creeping into his smile, a grit to his teeth. Something in the air feels wrong, and it's not the storm curling overhead.

.......

It's almost eleven by the time he's settled and fed. His old room has been unoccupied of course, but his dad has been in here recently, if only just to replace the sheets. 

Normally this would be the part where Stiles would go running to the bathroom, shower off the layer of road trip grime, wash his face, collapse on his bed to sleep off the exhaustion the two hour drive somehow managed to give him every time. But there's a kind of static in the air, the mind that leaves him restless and buzzing, halfway manic. It sets his teeth on edge, scratches its way across his temples; he's not good with mania, paces agitated across the carpet. 

It's magic, he knows. Stiles could identify excess ambient magic with both eyes blind at a hundred paces at this point, he's good at this whole spark thing. The knowing doesn't make it easier, doesn't stop the ache in his back teeth. There's really only one thing for it. 

The lockbox comes almost without him calling it, the zip on his suitcase tearing open. The box lands heavy in his hands, thick rich redwood and dark brass. For all that Stiles can appreciate a good witchy aesthetic, it's really not his style-he's less crystal balls and wands and more of a charmed coffee pot kind of guy (although in his defense, he had coffee brewing down to an art form these days). Modern, practical magic, with as much cryptic horseshit cut out of it as possible, now that is definitely more Stiles' thing. This guy is different though, not a travel kit so much as an essential tool, magic inlaid in the dense wood. It's one of the only things like this he lets himself own, keeps it stocked to the nines at all times. 

Having this box ready has saved his life before. It also saved his roommate from a nasty hangover more than once, but hey, nobody said that it was emergencies only. 

Stiles pricks his finger on the jagged edge of metal above the lock, slides his thumb down and smears the tiny droplet of blood over the agate stone inlaid in the lock. There's no key like your own blood. Blood magic isn't really super handy for anything else, really, the cost is a lot more than the actual worth (unless you're using someone else's, but really that's impractical and also probably illegal. Stiles isn't really that kind of a duck either, so there's that). The extra protection is more than welcome in this scenario though, this box would only open for him. Not that Stiles has had very many causes to suspect anyone else of the magical persuasion to want it. It's really more the principle of the thing. 

The latch snaps open, revealing a messy interior stuffed to bursting with all sorts of junk: bottles filled with various sundries, tweezers, little empty glass jars, crystals, a set of runestones he'd bought from the witch down on Finch and third on a whim. After some consideration, he grabs a bottle filled about halfway with sluggish brown liquid and a smallish metal pointed dip pen. The walnut ink had been hard to make, he wasn't looking forward to making a new batch, but it was always best to use some kind of organic ink for this shit and finding some that didn't cost an absolutely outrageous amount of money or a literal arm and/or leg (how the hell did art students even afford to eat, Jesus Christ) was damn near impossible. He pops the cork on the stout, wide-mouthed bottle, sets it on his desk, grabs some sheets of paper, and flops into the chair. His knee is jiggling, as if he can hardly stand to stay still. 

His spark practically leaps to his fingers, lurking just below his skin ready and eager, and he lets it guide the pen along the paper with a steady, slick glide. The runes mark themselves onto the pages, he scratches a circle of protective magic around the house as quickly and easy as pie, blots out the magic surrounding the bubble and it's a matter of using the excess remaining in the circle to get the itch out of his skin. 

It's when he's scraping out the twenty fifth ward (against dragonfire, of all things, there wasn't really an extensive list of specific things to protect against. Runes focus mainly on the abstract unless you do it for them) that he finally, finally feels the magic dip to a normal level. Still there, still prominent and obvious and making the air throb around him, but less like a broken arm and more like a sore thumb. 

God, he's tired. He rubs his stained fingers over his eyes. He needs a shower and the sweet, sweet embrace of sleep like, an hour ago.

.........

"...Pancakes? Hey, Stiles?" 

"Mmmrhg," is his intelligent response. Stiles smashes his face further into the pillow, smearing drool across his cheek, and wishes with everything he has to finally become one with his bed. It's been a long time coming. Shifting in the covers and burrowing deeper under the blanket, he cracks open his eyes. "Muh?" 

He can hear his dad laughing at him from the safety of the door, the jerk. "Do you want pancakes? I've got about two hours before I gotta go."

He flops his hand out from the safety of the covers, waves it around. "Blueb'ries. No bac'n f'r you," he grumbles into his pillow, presses his eyes into it. When his dad shuts the door, he cranes over to look at his phone, plugged in beside his bed. He fucks around for a bit, opens Facebook and checks his notifications, thumbs over his messages (no new texts, a picture of a cat from his roommate wishing him a good morning, nothing unusual). He has the time to wake up, for once, and God, he wants to take advantage before he has to go and face the world. 

Eventually, the smell of coffee and pancakes is too tempting for his empty stomach. He rolls over, tears off the covers like he's tearing off a band-aid, and regrets it almost immediately as the cold air meets his exposed legs. Pajama pants aren't really his thing unless he's got a day off and intends to spend it on the couch, but he tosses some on over his boxers anyway, pulling his T-shirt over top. It's just before eight, or so says his phone. It's November in California, so the sunrise is streaking in through light clouds but it's not yet too cold to handle. That doesn't mean that Stiles isn't gonna end up spending the morning buried under mountains of couch blankets, though, if he can help it. 

His dad is already chowing down enthusiastically at the kitchen table, and there's no sneaky smell of bacon grease, only the thick, sweet smell of maple, so Stiles decides that it probably safe to assume all he has to worry about is the blueberry pancakes in front of him. For now. His dad's health is important, after all. 

"Morning, sleepyhead," he teases. "I didn't actually think I'd manage to get you up, but I guess that roommate of yours is still awake at the asscrack of dawn every day, huh?"

"King is a delight." Stiles says, seriously. He makes a small mountain of pancakes on his own plate and pours himself the largest cup of coffee he can find before flopping down across from his dad. "Even at five in the morning."

John huffs out a laugh into his coffee cup. "I'm sure you'd say that about anyone if they made you breakfast like that every morning." 

Stiles nods sagely as he dumps sugar into his own mug. "Oh absolutely. I'd probably kill a man for them if they promised to make me food everyday. I reckon a saint wouldn't turn down the offer, dad, oh my god you don't even know. Their food is that good." 

"Learn any tricks you can share with your old man?" 

"Not that I'm able to remember at the asscrack of dawn." Stiles laughs. 

Breakfast is great. Stiles chatters about his schoolwork (he's changed his major to mythology with a minor in history since he's last seen his dad, but it's not like he didn't tell him), his dad makes cracks and teases him a bit about being kind of a nerd. The blueberry pancakes are awesome. The coffee is not awesome, but his dad made it for him so it's still pretty great. Just being able to talk with his dad over breakfast about normal people stuff is really, really good. He missed this. 

It's when Stiles is bent over the counter doing the dishes ("Yes, dad, of course I have to. You made me breakfast. Are you seriously looking a gift horse in the mouth right now because I swear to God I'll take it back and leave them in the sink.") that his dad brings up the reason why he's here. 

"So. Five dead bodies." His eyebrows shoot up to his hairline at the abrupt subject change. His dad just kind of laughs and rubs the back of his neck. 

"Segues are weird, huh? Shit, really? Five?"

"Language. Something uh," he pauses, makes a noncommittal wiggly hand gesture that Stiles guesses means something like 'supernatural and magical or some shit I don't know' before sighing loudly. "You know. Probably, from what I can tell. I mean, I'm not exactly an expert but..." He trails off, hand still suspended in the air for a minute before he drops it against the thigh of his work pants. 

Stiles quirks an eyebrow, "But?"

"They're most of the way eaten, Stiles. Coroner says that from what he can tell those are human teeth impressions on what's left of the bones, but the actual state of them is a bit. Well. They were kind of in pieces all over the place. Most of them were found scattered across the Preserve. It's not nice. "

"Bones? Pieces?" There's a horrified, terse silence while Stiles tries to suppress his urge to gag. "No kidding, Jesus Christ." He's got this awful mental image of someone's half eaten ribcage up in a tree somewhere, and it's. Not Nice. 

His dad winces sympathetically and folds his arms over his chest. He seems genuinely apologetic and a bit apprehensive about having to tell Stiles all this. "They're not just joggers wandering in there by accident either. Last known location for the vic's are scattered throughout town. In their houses, for most. Hell, one of them was in the Diner downtown on a date when he apparently just 'up and left in an awful hurry'," he makes air quotes around the last bit, frown deepening. "I sure as hell don't think it's just some crazy."

"Yeah most normal people don't. Uh. Eat people and spread the leftovers around. Or most crazy people, for that matter," Stiles shudders dramatically, looks at his unfinished coffee with a confused mix of nausea and remorse before dumping it down the sink, suddenly completely uninterested in eating or drinking anything for possibly forever. His stomach is still turning at the graphic imagery. Parental Discretion is Advised. "Do you have anything else for me?" 

"The whole area around where the bodies were found was absolutely rank. Deputy Marcus actually had to leave, it smelled so bad, and he's a tough cookie. If you're thinking about bringing in any uh, werewolf assistance," he can almost feel how weird that sentence was to say, "You might want to bring a bucket, and maybe some coffee beans or something for them to huff afterwards. It...lingers," his dad looks disgusted at even the olfactory memory, but he's shrugging on his coat anyway.

Stiles makes a vague kind of 'eurgh' noise, stops the flow of the water into the sink. He really hopes he doesn't have to call in the werewolf squad for this, if only to prevent them from getting up close and personal with something that had his dad making a face like that at the mere memory.

"I gotta get to work kid," his dad motions with his keys towards the front door. 

Happy for the distraction, Stiles pushes away from the counter and wraps one arm around his dad in a gruff hug. "Be careful, dad. I'd be mad if you got eaten." He half-jokes. 

His lips quirk up at the suggestion, before he gets serious again. "You too Stiles. Keep your phone on."

"Always. Never leave home without it." 

And then the kitchen is empty. 

His dad locks the door behind him, and the rumble of the cruiser's engine quiets soon after, leaving the house blissfully silent. 

Figuring out what the fuck is happening here is number one priority. Stiles, thankfully, has a lot of time to think about this, because he really needs to know what the actual fuck he's dealing with here before he get's up close and personal with something that smells like death and eats people. Jumping in headfirst, balls out, with no plan is really more Scott's thing. Was really more Scott's thing. Was probably still Scott's thing, God knows. It was his go to plan for literally everything throughout high school, and when he did make an actual plan it was sixty percent bullshit, fifty percent bad decisions, and fifty percent bad math.

He hasn't spoken with Scott since he left. 

The thought of him only adds to the bitter taste in Stiles’ mouth, but really that's not a half bad idea. If anyone had an idea for the supernatural cause behind five half consumed dead people, it would be Scott. Or at least, Scott's pack. Someone would have to have half a clue about what they're fighting. Ah, but. 

"Don't ever fucking talk to me again." 

Scott's voice rings through his head as clear as a bell, the last thing he'd said to him. It was so much more than just an argument, honestly, they’d been building up to it for years, with Isaac and Allison wedging a stake in the heart of their relationship and Scott’s predisposition for incredibly shitty decisions 

Shrugging heavily, Stiles shelves the idea of going to him for help for now, but doesn't discount it entirely. A tense talk with his former best friend might be necessary in the future, but he'll avoid it for as long as possible, goddamn it. Besides, he's a fucking research wizard! He'll only go to them for help if absolutely mandatory for his continued survival. Stiles is kinda stubborn that way. 

The sour taste in his mouth is still there, so he grabs a water bottle from the fridge before taking the stairs up to his old room two at a time. 

.........

His dad texts him throughout the morning, little, important things like 'there's sandwich meat in the fridge lyd', 'dep. miles and marta say hi', and 'coroners reports for the vics' with accompanying photos that have him envisioning the bodies they belong too. The clinical descriptions can't even keep the mental images from being completely revolting. He's got his music going, almost 900 tracks to keep him company while he researches, and Stiles will be the first person to admit that his taste is pretty eclectic, but it's awesome to have a little bit of everything when you're trying to focus on something like this. Soothes his ADHD a bit, gives his brain something else to focus on than the words and pictures on the screen.

Shockingly, Google is completely unhelpful. His Google-fu can normally give him a few potentials, or a place to start at the very least, but 'magical cannibal spirits that smell bad' is apparently not a popular topic of research. Ah well. It was worth a shot. That's not to say he doesn't have a few ideas, now, about what it could be. Stiles has learned a lot since freshman year, and is engrossed in a complete college course about things that go bump in the night. If he wasn't good at monsters, he wouldn't be cashing in on a 4.0 GPA. Not very many things need to eat human flesh, and the undead are on the top of the list. It would certainly explain the smell, dead things generally stink to high hell. He's got a notebook cracked open to the right of his laptop with 'Zombies???' scrawled in his writing on the first line. 'Lich' 'Revenant??' 'ghouls' 'VAMPIRES!!? follow, with the last thing being 'wendigo'. 

He's got a funny feeling about the last one. With the others he was kind of half joking, really, because he knows that zombies are not a thing (even if reviving the dead apparently is, thanks Peter) and he never managed to weasel a yes or no on Vampires from Derek and hadn't bothered to look into it much. Lich's and Revenants are both things, for sure. He's very, very certain about that. He'd almost been eviscerated by a Revenant one time, which was definitely memorable, and a Lich had almost siphoned his magic into nonexistence before he smote the shit out of it. But they were both more magic suckers than cannibals, and judging by the completely generic Facebook profiles for the only two victims that still had active ones (James Dumar and Declan Paxton, thank you Beacon Hills Gazette) at least two were non-super. Ghouls are also a thing, according to every actual accurate piece of folklore he'd seen. It might just be that he remembers hearing a story about Wendigos a really long time ago, maybe from one of the weird ghost story books his dad used to read when they went camping. Stiles knows now to trust that funny feeling, so he investigates further because the worst thing that this could be is a waste of time. 

He learns a lot, surprisingly, and the more he learns about Wendigos the more likely it seems to be one that's gnawing on the bones of the good people of Beacon Hills. Except. 

Except it's a winter thing. Myths started in Aboriginal tribes in Ontario and Quebec, some stories popped up in Minnesota and the Midwest, but this is California. Most of the mythos is that Wendigos come springing up after humans cannibalize other humans (yuck) or are bitten by a Wendigo and somehow survive only to start turning into one and eating people (double yuck). Some of the legends Stiles comes across describe it as "a being made entirely of ice" which is just not reconcilable with California weather no matter how you slice it. Stiles has been pretty extensive, he's spent three of the last four hours looking through so many stories about Wendigos that cannibal doesn't even look like a word anymore, and he can't find a single thing about Wendigos in California.

But hey, shit, he'd seen and been possessed by a completely undocumented sub-variety of Kitsune in his sophomore year of high school. He can work with this. 

He circles the word wendigo in his notebook five or six times, flips the page, and begins to write literally everything he knows. 

Googling 'how to kill a Wendigo' is surprisingly fruitful. Unfortunately nobody can seem to decide what would be the best course of action. Fire comes up a few times, silver knives and bullets, dismemberment, standard pray-the-evil-cannibal-monster-away kind of stuff show up also, but he's learned to take that with a whole box of salt by now. There's a particularly gruesome tale where a guy kills one by stabbing it in the head with a hunting knife twenty five times which is interesting and horrifying in almost equal measure. Nothing really substantial or informative, let alone particularly reliable. He would kill a man for access to the bestiary right now, goddamn.

Alright then.

He's still got Scott's number memorized, muscle memory helping him as he taps it out on his phone. He doesn't even bother looking at the time, even though it's probably late enough that Scott is either with the pack or sleeping. There hasn't been any light coming from anything but his laptop in a while. 

"H'lo?"

Asleep, then. 

"So five people walk into a bar and are cannibalized by a Wendigo." There's a long enough pause that Stiles looks at his phone to make sure the call is still connected.

"Excuse me?" oh, yeah, Stiles had changed his number when he moved. He'd kinda forgotten about that. "Stiles?" 

Scott's voice is muted over the phone so Stiles can't pick all the emotion in his voice apart like he wants to. He mostly sounds scandalized and sleepy, from what he can tell. "The one and only. That wasn't a joke by the way, five people were probably actually cannibalized by a Wendigo in the Preserve, which is a really serious issue. I don't make jokes about people getting eaten." 

"What the hell are you doing?" Ah, now he sounds mad. "It's-It's two thirty in the morning!" 

Stiles rolls his eyes at his phone, propping both legs up on his desk and leaning back. "Yes and five people have been eaten by a Wendigo in the Preserve in the last week. I have nothing conclusive about how to kill it, though. Might want to talk to Deaton about that. Or Derek I guess." there's a beat where neither of them say anything and Stiles takes a long drink of water before he continues, "Fire seems to be the popular opinion, might want to start with that. Also apparently things smell really funky in the woods right now, might want to take a few paper bags if you go. I've already warded my house against the smell, just in case." 

"What the fuck." There's a long suffering, what-the-fuck-is-even-my-life sigh from the other end of the phone, and Stiles can really relate right now. "There's a...a what? An indigo? In Beacon Hills? That's what that smell is?"

'I wouldn't know.' Stiles doesn't say. 'How do you not know,' 'No, in Antarctica I just figured you should know,' and 'Fuck you for not talking to me in a year and a half and that's all you have to say' Stiles also doesn't say. 

"I guess." Is what he settles on after a silence that's just this side of too long. There's a period on the end, a defined end of sentence, end of conversation, a 'that's all I have to say' period. Stiles has run out of words, because he doesn't want to talk to Scott because he's been disallowed from talking to Scott because Scott thinks he's a piece of shit. The silence then is thick in the air, then, because apparently Scott has also run out of words. Stiles can feel the anxiety creep up his chest, claw it's way into his lungs. It's like that day all over again, Scott facing down with him and the ache of it throbs, raw like an open wound. 

"You cast magic on your house?" Scott's voice is carefully neutral, the way it gets when he's really, truly pissed. 

He gulps, corrects, "My dad's house." 

"You cast magic in my territory. Without even telling me you were here." the words come slowly, but sound like they taste sour, harsh, like Scott is spitting them into his phone. "You came into my territory when I asked you specifically not to, and warded it without my permission." 

Those aren't questions. "I guess."

A low growl comes from the phone, and God he didn't miss this about working with werewolves, the macho dick-measuring and threats of violence. "Do you know what this looks like?" Scott sounds like he's talking through fangs, and Stiles would find it funny if it weren't also a threat. 

"What it looks like is me protecting myself," Stiles explains patiently, in his perfectly neutral voice that he uses when explaining something simple to someone who's really simple, "And my dad. From the Wendigo," he adds quickly when the growl over the phone drops in pitch, because of course Scott would go all I'm the Alpha about this. As if he thought Stiles would want to protect himself from Scott or the pack, that he would need to. A bitter realization comes to him. 

He's an outsider. He's no different from some random corner witch that wanders into Beacon Hills, into McCall territory.

He feels the same sour taste well up in his mouth from earlier like acid reflux. "I'll make sure to announce myself to you if I decide to come back again, Alpha McCall." there's a cool edge in his voice now, steely and formal, and he is pissed off and hurt and all sorts of feelings all over the place all at once. "I won’t call again." 

Now that's a real conversation ender. Stiles is good at ending conversations. Stiles is also apparently so fucking fantastic at ending friendships he doesn't even have to try. 

He hangs up the phone, tosses it on his bed, and goes to shower, because it's common knowledge that crying feels a lot more therapeutic under a steady stream of hot water.


	2. Chapter 2

Stiles spends two more days researching, just because he can. Call him anything, just don't call him underprepared. The worst thing that can happen is he wastes enough time that another body is found, which is shitty, but Stiles has long since resigned himself to the fact that he's kind of an asshole so you know. It's whatever. If there's one thing he's not cool with, though, it's being gutted and eaten like a really skinny fish, so he's got to get everything he can before he goes Wendigo hunting. 

And goddamn, that sounds seriously badass. He’s gonna have to start wearing leather and aviators if he keeps that up. He could probably do a pretty decent Han Solo, too, in a pinch. 

He’s got no illusions about being a Hunter with a capital H. He’s got no interest, either, and he would like to personally thank the Argent family as a unit for that, what with the terrifying and the torture and the everything. What he does, instead, is everything that he can to protect innocent people and innocent not-human people. He's more magic than your average bear, after all, can't quite count himself as human anymore even if he's pretty much just as squishy as one, and really he's been doing his damndest to protect Scott et. al. since he was like sixteen so he's kind of got a track record, there. There's something kind of crazy about all of this, honestly, but he's been doing some kind of consulting thing with the pack in San Francisco for a while. A bit like Deaton had been, actually, which is almost more insane than him actually doing it. King helps, sometimes, it's handy to have someone who's a Greenwitch around, honestly, especially when you're essentially making salves and potions and shit all the time, but normally they don't get involved on the front end of things unless Stiles is actively dying. Which happens less often than you'd think, thank God. He's more than prepared for a lot of different situations, oddly. The whole greenwitch thing is still a bit vague to him, actually, but Stiles imagines it's a bit like being a druid, only plus a whole lot more plants and minus the crazy. It's not like Alpha Hawke calls on him that often anyway. He only really gets a ring from her when things get really, royally pear-shaped. It's a blessing and a curse, really: on one hand, it means that when he gets a call from her or one of the betas of the San Fran pack, the likelihood that he's going to die horribly is disproportionately higher than normal. On the other, it probably means that they think he's really badass. Again, he's pretty good at the whole spark thing, so no surprises there. 

Stiles decides it's probably in his best interest to shelve Han Solo for later. Maybe he can do a bit the next time he goes paintballing. 

He finds depressingly little, again, even though he scours the internet with literally everything he has, and luckily for him there's no reports of any new half eaten people, which is always a bonus. So, then. He's about as prepared as he is ever gonna be for this. On the third morning, his dad is out of the house already when he wakes up (it's six forty three and the sun hasn't even thought about cracking through any kind of darkness yet, what the hell) and shit, that's a good a place to start as any. 

The covers are tangled around him in a jumbled mess, and tearing them off only makes him sad and cold. If he were a werewolf (were-anything, actually) he'd be whining pathetically. Or, actually, he wouldn't care because they don't feel cold or whatever. Whatever! It's ass o'clock, sue him. He almost whines anyway at the reminder. It's a close thing. 

The first order of business is a shower, because a shower sounds awesome. He's gonna need to scrub off mud and ash and whatever other miscellaneous forest muck manages to get on him later, but Stiles honestly can't resist the pull of steaming hot water in the chilly morning. Morning showers are awesome. Sure, all showers are rad, what with the hot water and the comfort and languid self loving. Even cold showers are pretty cool (ha) when applied sparingly in the right situations (re: disgusting humidity and summer weather). There's something to be said for waking up in absolute, naked, steamy comfort though, so yeah. Morning showers, he's a fan. He'll be forever disappointed that he spent literally so many years of his life denying this fact. 

He keeps it a quick perfunctory scrubbing, naked, in, clean, out in all under ten minutes. Mostly, it's because he's starving and is giving some serious consideration to flopping back to bed and never coming out again. 

Stiles has always trusted his instincts, even before he knew he was magic. Scott had basically come to him and said 'hey man, I'm having some weird-' and Stiles' immediate, reflexive diagnosis was 'werewolf, here take some chains for the full moon and a healthy dose of man pain. next patient please!', and his whole magic powers thing pretty much cemented that for him. So he has some faith that the whole day isn't going to go to shit, that he's not going to end up half chewed and spread around the woods like a fucked up party decoration, and yay, that's awesome, but it really doesn't mean that he wants to get out in the woods right now immediately. So, he dries himself, clothes himself (bless whoever said that layers were awesome, because layers are awesome, goddamnit, he is so warm), and sets himself on the kitchen because breakfast needed to happen before his stomach decided to actually start tunneling out of him like a facehugger inspired rebellion. Wakey wakey, et cetera. 

By ten, he's in the middle of the preserve with a knife of silver about the length of his hand and another one in iron in a holster over his jeans, and his lockbox, an extremely well stocked first aid kit, a lighter and makings for a molotov or four in his backpack. It's about as good as he's gonna get, really, and he's definitely not the most prepared he's ever been for something, but well, he's been in worse shape before. He'd hesitated when slipping the medical mask over his face given how extremely difficult that would be to explain away if he were to run into literally any other normal human being, but really, if the smell was anything like his dad was describing he'd take any amount of protection from it that he could get, even if it was probably useless to even try. Blocking out the scent of dead body is damn near impossible, and Stiles really, really wishes that he didn't know that from experience, seriously what is even his life. Not like the preserve is a really popular place right now anyway, unless you were a weird undead cannibal monster thing, or an idiot spark stupid enough to want to kill one, so he's probably safe on that front.

There's a game plan. He's got about ten miles of ground to cover in the preserve, and he wants to cover it end to end in as many traps as he can lay for this thing. He's got corpseflower in abundance already, which is awesome, because being attracted to the scent dead bodies unfortunately isn't something that's exclusive to Wendigos, and he's hoping that maybe dead bodies will be enough and he doesn't have to resort to live bait or something equally gross and morally dubious. Stiles has always thought of himself as being above that kind of thing, honestly, all the times when he played the part of the live bait completely notwithstanding. It's not really much of a plan honestly, given that he's only got the bait it and not the kill it part down, but hey, it's all he's got so he's got to run with it. It's not like he doesn't have any ideas either: the picture painted by the phrase 'stabbed the beast twenty seven times in the head with an ice pick' is ingrained in his memory probably permanently. Many thanks to the Ojibwe tribe for that particularly vivid nightmare fuel. 

Stiles shakes his head of the terrible, terrible mental imagery, hefts his backpack out of the trunk of the jeep and over his shoulder, and gets to work. He's got the car parked on the side of the road, and the leaves crunch under his feet when he descends into the underbrush. It's cold, the air almost crisp with frost, and he zips his hoodie and thanks whichever God is listening that he thought of layers when he left the house this morning. The traps should be simple enough to set up, corpseflower in the middle of some fire runes that have the safety on and set to Ridiculous. He'll be doing nobody any favours if he burns down the preserve because a squirrel steps on it by accident, honestly. Not that most squirrels are fond of dead body smell, to his knowledge, but hey he won't judge. 

There's a clearing some ten minutes into the woods from where he parked his jeep, and really, that's a good a place as any to start. He adds a marker on the map he has open on his phone, clicks the lock screen and drops it in his pocket. The rune is simple, a diamond with a line through the middle and another below it, but that doesn't mean he shouldn't do this right: Stiles grimaces and digs out the shape quickly in the dirt with a nearby stick, drops his backpack off of one shoulder and grabs the jar of mountain ash and the corpseflower. He unscrews the jar, dips his fingers in and closes his eyes. 

It's a quick enough process. He's got dirt and mountain ash everywhere now though, which sucks. 

Walking through the woods is actually pretty nice, even this time of year, and even knowing that they're literally infested with all kinds of supernatural bullshit. Kinda makes Stiles wish that there wasn't a murderous wendigo on the loose; he'd love to have some music on right now, make it a real walk in the park. He marks down another five runes, walks around for about two hours before he calls it a day.

There's a problem with this plan, in that it would be dangerous and also take forever to riddle the whole preserve with traps. He spends most of the next two days doing the perimeter around the forest, the places closest to the roads and to the suburbs, canvassing them end to end. When he gets home, he slumps into his bed with a bone deep exhaustion that can only really come from being absolutely spent, magically and physically. About midway through the second day, he covers everything on the Beacon Hills side of the preserve, and starts heading inwards. It's when he actually gets into the thick of the woods, deep enough that the only thing that he can hear is the crack of twigs and leaves, something shifts. There's something like static buzzing in the air around him, the stench of rot thick in his throat. Every hair on his body in standing at attention. Stiles jerks up, whips around cursing. 

The forest is silent around him. That's never a good sign.

Stiles is no werewolf. He doesn't often wish that he was, but really any kind of super senses that would allow him to pick out if something was circling him or something would really be awesome right about now. He swallows, slips the mask over his face and curls his fingers over the hunting knife at his thigh. The temperature has dropped so low that he can see his breath now billowing out through the blue fabric, and he has to suppress a shiver. A few minutes pass, tense, quiet as a tomb. Stiles shifts uneasily, his eyes dart from tree to tree, but he both sees and hears nothing. 

Well, he hears nothing right up until there's a God almighty snarl somewhere close by, followed by a deafening crack and a distinctly canine yipe. "Oh, fuck," doesn't even begin to cover it, Stiles trips and curses more as he hurtles himself through the forest towards the sound because Goddamnit. Shit. He knows what werewolf sounds like when he hears it. He knows what werewolf pain sounds like, too, which is. Worse. 

It wasn't that far away, but Stiles hurtles through the trees at full speed, miraculously doesn't trip. 

He throws himself around the trunk of a tree into a small clearing, and sees. 

Oh Jesus Christ. 

There's a tree cracked down the middle, a fresh break, half of it swinging in the slight breeze. An emaciated humanoid easily twice as tall as Stiles with skin as pale as a corpse and purple and green with gangrene leans beneath it, one of its huge twisting horns tangled in the branches. The stink of rot is enough to make him gag. The one arm that Stiles can see has long blackened fingers that might as well be knives, a huge chunk missing from the forearm that's steadily leaking some unidentifiable black substance that looks like oil. There's a horrifying crunching noise, and something (someone?) beneath it makes an awful, wet, retching scream. 

Internally, Stiles echoes the sentiment. 

He has a molotov in his hand before he even really registers what he's doing, and the smell of gasoline and dead thing is a really unholy combination. One that gets the creature's attention, apparently, because it swings it's huge, horned head around to stare at him and. Oh, he echoes his sentiment from earlier, Oh Jesus Christ. It's covered mouth down in dark blood, strips of something hanging from it's exposed, lipless mouth, a blackened, skull like nose, and it's eyes are upsettingly perfectly human looking, wide and bulging from their sockets. 

Fuck it. Nope, absolutely fuck this. He's gonna be having nightmares about this thing for months, Jesus Fucking Christ. 

It shrieks at him, moves almost impossibly fast away from the collapsed were and towards his squishy human self, but for once Stiles is faster. He hurls the bottle as hard as he can, and if Scott ever talks to him again, he's gonna seriously thank him for all that time spent practicing lacrosse, because the molotov hits the thing square in the face. It stumbles back, ablaze and screaming, and flees faster than Stiles can track, but he's not dumb, the chill is still in the air, and everything still smells like death. 

The woods are silent, for long enough that Stiles has time to light another molotov and toss his bag off to the side before the thing comes screaming towards him with terrifying speed. The bottle smashes against its chest, glass embedding it its decaying flesh, but it. Shit. It keeps coming. 

Time for plan B, then. 

The silver knife is in his hand in a second, and barely another before it's implanted in the wendigo's brain. It throws its head back in another shriek of pain, but Stiles holds fast, uses the momentum and his grip on the knife to pull himself up and onto the thing's horns (antlers?) which creak and snap under his weight. He gets another three stabs in before it grabs him and suddenly he's on his back on the ground, wheezing for air. He cries out in pain when he tries to scramble to his feet, his thigh sliced to ribbons by the wendigo's long, black claws, and he scrambles around in the dirt for a minute. Stiles can't hear it coming, which is almost worse, but he knows that he's being circled, taunted. 

His leg is slick with blood, and he smears his hand over it hissing through his teeth at the pain. His backpack is on the other side of the clearing, he has nothing else to work with, and God, he hopes this will be enough because if not, he and his new wolf friend are completely fucked. 

The thing leans over him from above, tongue lolling out from between its skeleton grin. Stiles grins right back, releases the magic he's built up in his palm with a breathless but perfectly enunciated "Ustura."

There's a ripple in the air, a moment where nothing happens, and Stiles closes his eyes because he has no desire to see the aftermath. There's an upsetting kind of splat noise followed by a terrible, echoing scream as the flesh of the wendigo's shoulder bursts, superheated from the inside. Everything is quiet, then, except for the slippery sounds of viscera moving across his chest as he breathes, and the shuddering, wheezy breaths of whoever the injured wolf is.

Blood magic isn't useful, he said. It's not practical, he said. Fuck. Jinxed it, much? 

Stiles sits up, hurls the creature away from him, yanks the mask off his face before turning and puking his guts out. It looks like it's rapidly turning into dust, decaying at an incredible speed, which, honestly thank God because the only thing that smells worse than dead thing is burning dead thing. This is already way up there on his list of worst days ever, he doesn't need to give it any more reason to be terrible. He's gonna be smelling like this forever. Ugh. He spits four, five times, before yanking off his hoodie and throwing it on the ground. Actually fuck it, he pulls off his plaid shirt, too, and he's definitely cold now, but at least he's not cold and also covered in monster guts. 

The werewolf makes a distressed, low whimper, and yeah now is not really the time to be concerned about personal hygiene. His leg is fucked, strategically speaking, but the clearing isn't that large. He will definitely need stitches, but he's in no danger of bleeding out if he doesn't move around too much, even if he is a little woozy. Stiles drags himself slowly, carefully over to his bag, scraping through the dirt and leaves. He checks, quickly, and the first aid kit is undamaged so he tosses it towards the prone were. He holds his lockbox under his left arm and scoots himself backwards with his right, until his back hits the tree that the other man is slumped against, and oh.

Oh, hell. This is bad.

Derek is half curled around himself, protecting with his hand what looks like a steadily bleeding chunk missing from his abdomen. There looks to be at least two more bites there, several more in the meat of the bicep that's uselessly flopped against the ground, hand outstretched and declawed. Derek, who's white undershirt is stained red and black with ichor and blood, side shredded from the same claws that had ripped Stiles's leg apart, probably. 

Ah, jeez.

"Hey," is the only thing that Stiles can think to say. "You don't look so good there, big guy. Is it healing?" 

A low, choked noise is all he gets in response, and his hand twitches up automatically to rest on Derek's shoulder, solid pressure, hopefully some comfort. He gives it a squeeze before withdrawing, swiping his bloodied thumb over the stone on his lockbox which snaps open. 

"It's okay, I'll help. You allergic to anything? Can werewolves even be allergic to anything? Does the wolfsbane thing count as an allergy?" He jokes mostly to himself, pops the cap on a nearly full bottle of crushed violets. The angle is weird, but Stiles pours a palmful of the powder onto Derek's chest and mumbles a fast incantation, shuddering through the strain on his already depleted reserves. His core pulses almost violently, and he twitches under the pressure, black bleeding into his vision. Derek jerks forward reflexively into his leg, and they both hiss in pain. Stiles peeks over when the worst of the throbbing in his head subsides at fresh, pink scars on his bicep and the still bleeding wounds on his stomach. His tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth, suddenly dry, and he closes his eyes against a wave of dizziness.

"Listen, man, when you're doing a bit better, there's a first aid kit over here, and my leg is fucked. I don't know how well you're doing, but I'm seriously wiped, so I think I'm gonna pass out for a while if that's cool?" 

"Yeah." 

Derek's voice sounds just about as wrecked as Stiles feels, like someone had taken a belt sander to his throat, but Stiles is fading fast. "Cool."


End file.
